The vacation continued for a while, and Ronald finally adjusted his mental state.

On this day, he received a call from Walter Murch. The rough cut and first assembly of the film had been completed, and he could go to the editing room to discuss the details.

"Walter, how do you feel about my new movie? I feel like this is the movie with the best collaboration among the actors since I started working in the industry. What's your opinion?"

Ronald saw Murch in front of the editing table and couldn't help but ask him what he thought of the film he had invested in. Since Murch taught himself how to edit in San Francisco, he has shot many blockbuster films. It's time to let the master

In the same way, let’s evaluate whether I have made any progress in the past few years.

"The dance scenes are very good, never seen before. The casting is probably one of the best I've ever dealt with in a movie, other than Coppola's 'The Godfather,'" Murch said when he saw Ronald coming.

I happily stood up and hugged him, then gave up a seat for Ronald to sit together in front of the editing table.

"But the movie clip I gave you is a little less interesting, so I really hope you can come over and discuss it with me."

"Fun?" Ronald asked.

"The rough cut version of the entire film is two hours and ten minutes long.

Every shot you shoot is actually pretty much the same. I don’t have many options, unlike some directors’ movies where the rough cut will be more than double the final length.

And among many shots, only the first shot is often the best, and it is edited for you, just like completing homework for high school students, which are all multiple-choice questions."

"Ha..." Ronald smiled, "Is this a good thing or a bad thing?"

"From a producer's point of view, this shows that the director has his own vision for the finished film and can complete the shooting on time. From a director's point of view, there may be less freedom for the actors to express themselves on the set. But from an editing point of view,

, I think it’s a little less challenging. It’s not like when I was editing for other directors, I often had to challenge the limits and cut together seemingly impossible clips.”

"Hahaha, I'll just take it as you praising me."

The two joked around, starting from the beginning and slowly watching all the shots.

Over the past two days, Ronald gradually got into the mood and began to express his thoughts to Murch on the processing of certain shots.

The two have the same editing methodology, and often can quickly agree with each other's opinions. Only in sound design, Ronald doesn't know much, and Murch takes the lead in this area of ​​work, and also takes the time to give Ronald lessons.

.

Every day's editing work is progressing slowly at a speed visible to the naked eye, discarding cutscenes of one or two seconds and using a more interesting connection method. The length of the film has gradually been reduced from more than two hours to one hour and fifty.

minutes, and gradually move towards the scheduled target of one hour and forty minutes.

One afternoon, the two were discussing a shot in the editing room. Both Ronald and Walter Murch insisted on their own ideas. The two discussed for a long time with no results, so they took a break to replenish caffeine.

Murch asked Ronald, who was drinking a strange drink like wolfberry black tea, a question he had wanted to ask for a long time.

"I heard that those high-ranking Jews are looking for trouble with you?"

"Yes, they also asked Michael Douglas to come to me for an interview. In fact, they just didn't want a rich Jewish girl to fall in love with a poor Irish boy, and finally gave up on the rich Jewish second generation to get together with a dancer.

.”

"So what are you going to do? Our current version contains a lot of intimate scenes between the baby and Johnny, as well as scenes where the two finally resolve their misunderstandings and look forward to a future together."

"I have my own way." Ronald smiled and replied to Murch.

"You don't want to get things done secretly, do you? That won't work, it will cause big problems."

"Ronald", Murch pulled Ronald to the table, "You are still very young. When you entered the industry, the Jewish forces in Hollywood had already retired from the stage and behind the scenes. You may not understand their ferocity.

If you deceive those old Jewish guys with the idea of ​​making yin-yang copies, there will be big problems later. Among other things, the MPAA, which handles film ratings, is also a place where Jews are piled up. They can get stuck there.

You, give you a bad rating.

Even if you get a good rating from MPAA, or find a way to bypass them and find a theater to show it yourself, it's still very risky. Don't forget, the son of the Douglas family is looking for you."

"What happened to the son of the Douglas family?" Ronald did not answer Murch's question, but was curious about his evaluation of Michael Douglas' family, as if there was some gossip.

"Well, I haven't caught up with the days when Jewish gangs were running rampant in Hollywood. I heard from my seniors that before the 1960s, Jewish gangs had a reputation of being more feared than Italians. Legend has it that Michael's father, Kirk, was a Jewish gangster in Hollywood.

Hollywood spokesperson.

Do you know Natalie Wood, the actress who unfortunately passed away a few years ago?”

"Of course, I saw him at the Golden Globe Awards," Ronald replied.

"It is said that in her early years in Hollywood, she was forced by Kirk Douglas. He was a Hollywood 'sexual predator'."

"No way?" Ronald raised his brows when he heard this kind of gossip. He is also familiar with Hollywood. He and the actress are all consensual, and then communicate through the agent. Everyone gets what they want. I haven't heard of any

Is this kind of forced thing happening? Does it have to be so ugly?

Unless it's a non-union-registered project, some small production companies, and films released directly to the video tape market, I've heard of this happening.

It turns out that at Weston Pictures, Michelle Cannold, the distribution director of Daydream Pictures who was poached by Ronald, talked about the chaos of those small projects. Weston Pictures used to specialize in

Filming NC-17 content video tapes.

"Hollywood is a new place now. But when I was in college, it was still a chaotic hodgepodge. Many actors didn't have makeup artists and had to do their own makeup. Actresses often had to find their brothers as assistants.

Protect yourself on set.

I've also heard that... when Kirk Douglas was in Hollywood in the late 1940s, he once got a young actor named Jean Spangler pregnant. On the night she went to see Kirk for negotiation,

Just disappeared.

Later, his body and handbag were found on the way from her home to Kirk Douglas' home, with an unfinished note inside with Kirk's name written on it."

"Really or not?" Ronald had never heard of these gossips. "Then why do people think of the Italian Mafia when they talk about gangs? But no one mentions the Jewish gangs?"

"You can figure it out yourself. There are two reasons for this. On the one hand, Jews are gradually occupying the upper echelons of Hollywood, and they are unwilling to make movies and TV series about Jewish gangsters. On the other hand, Italian directors like to shoot movies.

Gangster story.

Nowadays, most of the American people's stereotypes about ethnic groups come from movies and TV series. With more of these movies being made, they have gradually become a symbol of Italians, and many ignorant Italians are still very proud...

"

That's true.

Ronald touched his ears. After Coppola filmed The Godfather, many mafiosi in movies were of Italian appearance. Although "The Godfather" is essentially a family film, the background story of the mafia, many gangsters are actually

I started to learn how to act in movies, which further deepened the stereotypes of Italians from other ethnic groups.

Thinking of this, Ronald smiled at Murch. The other person obviously cared about him very much, so he would tell such gossip.

"It's okay, Walter, I have a sense of discretion. I thought about it when I invested the money to make this movie. Old Jewish men will not say anything about this movie."

Ronald whispered his thoughts into Walter Murch's ear.

"are you sure?"

"I am sure that if the Jews continue to trouble me in this way, any action they take will deepen the audience's impression of the Jewish girl's story. So the best way is to pretend not to see it."

…

Some time passed. The rough cut of the film was completed. After assembling the film into a complete copy for the second time, Ronald called and invited Michael Douglas, who had helped deliver the message, to come and see the finished film.

appearance.

"You were filming in Virginia before this movie, right? I happened to be filming 'Fatal Attraction' in New York at that time, and I returned to Hollywood at about the same time as you." Michael Douglas was still dressed like a noble boy, very energetic, and he came in

Hugged Ronald.

"Oh, how about working with director Adrian Lyne? I was on the set of his 'Flashdance' and he is a very talented person."

"It's great, it's simply great. He is a good 'actor's director' and won't give us too many constraints. As an actor, it is the most comfortable to work with a director like him. Glenn often told me

, how lucky I am to work with Adrian.”

"Glenn?"

"It's the heroine, Glenn Close. She is a great actor. She plays a slightly insane lover who wants to destroy my family. Have you met her?"

"Oh, it's her. We met once, at the party of 'The Big Chill'. Kevin Costner originally had many scenes, but they were all deleted in the end..."

Ronald and Douglas chatted for a while, then invited him to the screening room and watched "Dirty Dancing" with music.

"Dong...dong dong..." I remembered the drumbeat of Mambo, and what appeared on the screen was an old dance scene, with several dancers doing Dirty Dancing in the basement, a shot full of temptation, in slow motion,

showed on the screen.

"Is this what you call 'Dirty Dancing'?" Douglas touched his chin as if he was very interested.

The duration of the copy is one hour and forty minutes, and the final subtitle list has not yet been added.

Michael Douglas, who had watched the entire movie, looked over at Ronald.

“You changed the ethnicity of the heroine’s baby? Or to be more precise, you hid it, right? I didn’t hear anyone say they were Jewish during the entire movie.

Johnny's ethnicity was not mentioned much, and it was only mentioned at the end when the two of them hugged each other and danced in the crowd.

If you cooperate like this, I think those old guys will have no problem. But does this hinder your creative freedom?" Michael Douglas asked Ronald very politely.

"Michael, you lived in Los Angeles when you were a child, right?" Ronald didn't answer, but asked the other person.

"No, after my parents divorced, I lived with my mother in New York. I went to school there since I was a child, and I didn't go to New Jersey until college. What?"

"Then how come you don't know that the Kellerman Resort Hotel in the movie is based on the Catskills? Aren't those resort hotels exclusively for Jews called the Borscht Belt by you?

The food that appears in the movie also contains borscht, and they are all resort hotels that Jews only go to. Anyone who is a Jewish child there will be able to tell that, right?"

"Oh, actually my mother is not Jewish. She is of Irish descent. So when I was a child, I didn't go to those Jewish-only resorts. We always went to Long Island in New York during our holidays."
To be continued...